Megahouse has unveiled the next addition in their Desktop Real McCoy high quality Dragon Ball figure line. Of course it is none other than Son Goku! You may recall that the first figure in the series featured Goku riding a dinosaur, which was based on the Akira Toriyama – The World cover illustration. This time around, it is no surprise the second figure is being based on another of Toriyama’s illustrations, the cover of Tankōbon Volume 34. If you would like to pick this up for yourself (like I will be), you can actually pre-order the figure at either CDJapan or RightStuf.

Those of you Australians still waiting for “Part 2” of Kai to come out will not have to wait much longer. As we have mentioned on the podcast, Madman will be distributing FUNimation’s release both on DVD and Blu-ray on 03 November 2010. This set contains episodes 13-26, and was released in North America yesterday.

Back over here in North America, we can expect “Part 3” of the series on both DVD and Blu-ray from FUNimation on 14 December 2010, only a three month break in between releases (as opposed to the four months between “Part 1” and “Part 2”).

We are devastated to learn that Masayuki Uchiyama, animation director and key animator for much of the various series and early movies for the franchise, passed away due to heart failure on August 31st at age 58. His work left quite an impact on the series, and we will all miss him.

The next three Dragon Ball Kai episode titles have been leaked online early — here is a quick run-down of what to expect in the upcoming weeks:

Amazon Japan has revealed the cover art for the first DVD volume and Blu-ray box of the “Artificial Humans & Cell arc”. A big thanks to Andrew for giving us the heads up about these! Both are set to be released 02 October 2010, with the DVD retailing for ¥2,940 (~$30) and the Blu-ray running a reduced ¥14,679 (~$175). The DVD will contain episodes 55-57 presented in 16:9 widescreen, while the Blu-ray box will contain episodes 55-65 presented in 4:3 full screen spread across four discs. The most obvious note to make is that the releases colors have switched from red and blue to a mutual orange.

Since the English dub of Dragon Ball Kai was first announced for North American television broadcast, we have covered very few examples of the censoring due to the uncut home release being readily available and essentially nullifying any complaints we could have about the censoring.

That was until this popped up in the most recent episode aired as a part of TheCW4Kids block, though:

The worst Mr. Popo has seen in America so far has been Viz censoring his lips throughout the entirety of their manga (he was never visually edited in any other North American broadcast of the TV series) — the blue here is just blinding!

The “Viz Big” re-releases of the Dragon Ball manga have finally been back on-track since the very beginning of the year when Dragon Ball Z volume 6 was delayed from January to February and then again to March.

It looks like Dragon Ball Z volume 9 has been pushed back from 19 October 2010 a little ways to 09 November 2010, though.

The “Viz Big” omnibus line generally tosses three volumes into one larger book. This particular volume contains the very end of the manga, and comprises the remaining two volumes (original Japanese tankōbon 41 and 42). While printed on a higher-quality stock of paper and regaining some of the color chapters, the “Viz Big” line retains the art and script censoring from their prior “Graphic Novel” releases.

There is no word from Viz what their plans are, if any, for the franchise after this release, including any additional daizenshuu releases or the fandom-desired uncut kanzenban release.

With the recent news about the upcoming Mexican dub of Dragon Ball Kai, it seems that fans are all-ears about additional international versions of the series. We heard some rumblings way back in April with some Facebook shenanigans about a possible “alternate” English dub of Kai (a la the English dub of Dragon Ball Z produced with the Ocean Studios cast for Canada and parts of Europe) covering the Freeza story arc to the end of the series. Absolutely nothing more had come of that for several months.

Regular visitor Ricky tipped us off to a recent episode of “Voiceprint with Trevor Devall and Guests“, a podcast with regular appearances by Ocean voice actors. In this particular episode (September 8’s episode 26), Kirby Morrow (the eventual voice of Goku following the series of Ian James Corlett -> Peter Kelamis -> Kirby Morrow) revealed:

I’d like to mention that a show is coming back… a little-known show called DragonBall Z.

…

It’s already been released in Texas, they’re recording it in Texas, it’s known, it’s on the Internet. DragonBall Z Kai is being recorded in Texas by the crew in Texas for release only in America, and we’re doing a dub in Canada.

…

It’s already being recorded in Texas, they’re talking about it and everything else at the cons, but ya’ know, I did well over 100 episodes, three years of recording as the main character, Goku… and a new company has the project, and they think I might not be right for the role. I sound, in their words, “too cool”, to be Goku.

No time frame was given for the show’s production or debut, though from the sounds of it we can expect a staggered release schedule following behind FUNimation’s English dub for the series, exactly how Dragon Ball Z wound up at the beginning of last decade.

This would be the third international version of Dragon Ball Kai, following FUNimation’s English dub which debuted in May 2010, and the forthcoming Mexican dub. It will be interesting to see who comes next. Italy? Germany? Spain? Brazil?